"They remain ignorant of the enemy’s condition.
The result is cruel."
Sun Tzu's The Art of War 13:1:13-14
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Competition as Comparison
Sun Tzu saw that success is based on comparisons. For Sun Tzu, competition means a comparison of opposing positions. Battles are won by positioning before they are fought. Good positions discourage others from attacking you and invite them to support you. Sun Tzu's system teaches us how to systematically build up our positions to win success in the easiest way possible.
Keys to The Art of War
Sun Tzu's book is one of the most valuable works in human history. It is also one of the most difficult to understand. Much of Sun Tzu's writing is based on concepts in traditional Chinese science and philosophy with which modern readers are unfamiliar. Simply reading an English translation of Sun Tzu gives you very little idea of his methods. There are a number of serious barriers that stand in the way of our understanding the text. Much of what it teaches is diametrically opposed to what we think we "know" about competition.
To get you started, we give you an idea what the book covers in this brief summary of its chapters. We then explain the work's underlying cultural context and roots in Chinese science, especially its methods of diagramming relationships.
Today's Article on Sun Tzu
Below is one of the 232 articles in our Sun Tzu's Rule Book. Each explains one aspect of Sun Tzu' science and a step-by-step process for using it. We offer a new article every day following our Rule Book's Outline.
When learning the best practices in our competitive arena, trial and error is the slowest possible method of discovering what works. How-to books, like our own Rule Book, can give step-by-step descriptions and examples, but they are limited. The best sources about best practices are those who have been successful in a given competitive arena. We may think of those people as our competitors, but that is the wrong mindset. Most people shy away from learning their competitors' methods out of a misplaced sense of competition.
The world is filled with people who have practical experience in specific areas of skill. Many are willing to share their knowledge. The most important are those we might normally see as our competitors (1.3.1 Competitive Comparison). Strategy starts by mastering the best practices in any given competitive arena (7.2.1 Proven Methods). Those standards provide the basis for our strategic thinking. You wouldn’t be reading this article unless you were interested in developing new skills in the system of strategy based upon the history of others success. The best way to learn new skills is to develop relationships with people who already have those or know the systems that we want to learn (1.5.2. Group Methods).
The following five rules describe how we get a better perspective on best practices.
- To get a perspective on best methods, we must to seek out and listen to people who have the...
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